


Bury Your Gays

by KaRaEa



Category: Smallville
Genre: Final Girl, M/M, Messing around with the fourth wall, Meteor powers are an explanation for anything, Slasher typical violence, The power of tropes, Whore Virgin Scholar Athelete and Fool, wavy hand timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 15:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14115381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaRaEa/pseuds/KaRaEa
Summary: Being in a slasher movie was never something Clark planned for. He doesn't even watch slasher movies. He doesn't know the rules that the others seem to have memorised. He's trying his best to keep everyone alive, but Lex and Pete seem adamant that someone has to die, they just need to figure out who.Lana suddenly looks horrified. "Oh my god, I was a cheerleader."Chloe pats her on the arm.





	Bury Your Gays

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still not happy with the ending, but this has been hanging around my drafts folder for far too long. It may get edited a little at a later date.

"Well I'm dead," Lex says jovially.

Clark turns around to look at him, confused and a little annoyed that Lex is taking the situation so lightly.

"What?" Lex asks, "The rules of Slasher movies are clear. Have you never seen Cabin in the Woods?"

"We're all going to get out of this," Clark reassures the others in the face of Lex's ill timed nerdiness.

"We'll certainly try," Lex says placatingly. "Although I do have to insist that no one has sex. No making out either, just to be on the safe side."

Clark glares at him.

Pete grimaces. "I hate to say this, but Lex is kind of right."

"Yeah," Chloe agrees. "It's pretty hard to work out who gets to be the final girl though. Or, I mean, who the whore is for that matter. Pete's clearly the jock, but everyone else..."

Lana raises her eyebrows but stays quiet while she continues trying to dial out to the police on the off chance.

"Depends if gender is always a factor," Lex says. "As far as I'm aware, you're all virgins which would leave me as the whore. Unless that role can only be filled by a woman, in which case I'm likely the scholar as the older, more highly educated group member."

Pete makes a noise of disagreement. "Chloe would be the scholar, she's the investigative reporter."

"Unless gender is a factor, then I'm either the whore or the final girl," Chloe points out.

"As great as it is that you're all getting along for once," Clark says, mostly towards Pete and Lex, "Please shut up."

"If gender isn't a factor Clark's totally the final girl," Pete says.

The others nod and hum their agreement.

Clark rolls his eyes.

"I wonder how this power works," Lex ponders aloud. "Most meteor mutations don't have nearly this kind of scope."

"See, I wondered if it was psychosomatic, that the victims were trapped in a dream state until only one person survived and their bodies just died from shock," Chloe says. "But without seeing the bodies there's no way of knowing, and they're all still missing. The survivors told us enough to know it's a slasher movie universe, but we don't know the mechanics."

"Makes sense," Lex says.

"What on earth about this situation makes sense?!" Clark snaps in exasperation.

Lana suddenly looks horrified. "Oh my god, I was a cheerleader."

Chloe pats her on the arm.

"What?" Clark asks, completely lost by the sudden change in topic.

"The whore is almost always the cheerleader," Pete says. "Seriously, have you never seen a slasher movie?"

Clark shrugs. He's really not a horror kind of guy. "If you guys are all such experts, why don't you figure out how we survive this?"

They all exchange looks.

"What?" Clark asks again.

"The final girl is called the final girl for a reason, Clark," Chloe explains carefully. "If this really is a projection of a slasher universe, we don't get out of here until there's only one of us left." She takes in everyone's perturbed faces. "We really don't know what happened to the other victims after the final girl got out. For all we know, they're still just trapped in the movie universe and whichever one of us gets out can rescue the others."

Lex, either bored or uncomfortable with the more sombre conversation, wanders off to examine their surroundings. It's some strange take on the mansion, the kind of thing someone who knew what the mansion looked like from the outside only might imagine. Gone is Lex's model siege castle and Warrior Angel collection. Gone are any non-medieval historical artefacts. Gone is Lex's more modern furniture.

Also gone are the electricity and Clark's powers.

"So our best bet is what? To get killed as fast as possible?" Clark snarks.

"That's not actually a bad plan," Lex calls from where he's eyeing an overly gory tapestry with distaste.

"It's a terrible plan!" Clark argues.

Chloe looks at each one of them speculatively. "The best thing we can do right now is work out who's playing each role and what kind of slasher this is. If the monster is corporeal we might have a chance."

"Decapitation," Pete says with far too much glee.

Chloe nods.

Clark looks around at Lex's castle, at the man himself, and wonders if all those lessons in strategy and battle tactics Lionel forced into Lex's childhood might finally pay off. "Lex?"

Lex pauses, clearly surprised at being asked. He considers for a moment before answering, though Clark's convinced it's more weighing their predicted reactions than the plan Lex has probably been brewing since they arrived. "Die as fast as possible," he reiterates. 

Clark sighs. 

"The best way to win is to convince your opponent that you're not fighting," Lex says. "Let them assume victory." He wanders off yet again, fingers trailing just shy of touching a display of medieval weaponry. "I assume I don't need to tell any of you the legend of Troy?"

"You're suggesting... Some kind of Trojan horse?" Chloe parses, though Clark has no idea how. She visibly works out the rest of Lex's implication. "Deliberately letting one of us die so they can save the others?"

Lex nods. "You suggested that the victims may be dying of shock?"

"Yeah," Chloe says. "But I don't see how that helps us. Assuming we don't die in real life, then that plan could work. But if our bodies die too, then whoever gets killed off won't get the chance to save the others."

"Unless we can be reasonably certain that the person who dies first will survive in reality," Lex says.

"But how could we..." Chloe trails off as they all turn towards Clark.

They don't know. Clark's only ever told Pete. They can't know.

Lex raises one pale eyebrow but releases Clark from his gaze. "We can't be certain, and I would never suggest that any of you take the risk. I, however, have found myself to be... unusually resilient since the meteor shower."

Bullshit. Clark's had to save the guy enough times to know that's a pile of crap. "Bullshit. You're just being noble and self sacrificing."

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" Chloe asks, amused. 

Lex's mouth quirks up at the corners. "I don't think I've ever been accused of being noble or self sacrificing."

"Lex, your life is worth no less than any of ours," Lana says, calm as she always is when disaster is looming but not quite there yet. Her freak out at whatever the meteor mutant's fantasy sends at them is bound to be interesting. "We'll find another way."

"Lana's right, we'll figure it out," Clark agrees easily. He's not a horror fan, but he's watched enough movies to know there's always a way out. Horror can't be that different, right?

Pete shifts and squares up as much as he's able. "Hate to break it to you Clark, but we don't have a whole lot of options here."

Clark thinks, mentally goes through every fight he's ever had with a meteor mutant. "We just need to stay alive long enough for someone on the outside to figure out what's happening." He concludes. Everyone who ever helps him win those fights is here except his parents, but his parents should be more than enough. They'll figure out he's missing, they'll link it to the other disappearances, they'll fix this. Clark just needs to keep everyone alive until then. 

And if he has to, he'll revisit Lex's plan. Only Lex won't be their Trojan horse.

 

The slasher villain appears over two hours later, just as they're finally warming up around the fireplace in the study. The room is lit dimly by emergency candles and camping lamps so at first they don't notice that one of the shadows doesn't belong.

They're talking about origin stories, Lex and Pete filling Clark in on slasher formula and how the monster is usually introduced through a local legend. 

"But we don't have a local legend like that," Clark says when they've done filling him in on famous examples. 

Chloe shrugs. "We have plenty of bullied kids or angry farmers, it wouldn't take much to cook up a slasher villain. Any of the kids that got used for a scarecrow over the years, any meteor freaks locked up in basements, any farmers who lost their livelihoods to Luthorcorp, they could all be prime candidates."

"So we could be dealing with a wall of weird candidate within a wall of weird candidate?" Clark looks down at his recently mortal hands, complete with splinter from setting up the fire. A movie villain with superpowers might be a bit much for him right now.

"Only if it complies with the internal logic of slasher horror," Lex says.

"Guys," Pete says, and they all turn to him at the tone of his voice. "Doesn't the killer usually appear after the background story?"

It's then that the shadow to Lana's left moves, metal glinting in the firelight as she dodges what looks like a sickle. 

Their monster has taken the form of a farmer, more old fashioned that any of the current inhabitants of the real Smallville but obvious in his work clothes even through the blood spattered across his front. Tall and broad, facial features still hidden by the dim light and the shade from his hat.

Lana's expert dodge and front kick that sends the villain stumbling backwards long enough for her to scramble away is somewhat of a surprise. Lex leaping in front of her, medieval flail held high is less of a surprise. However, the villain looks right past him, catching the flail to the side of the head, neck snapping to the side under the force, and stepping forward as if it was a slap. He knocks Lex aside and reaches again for Lana.

"Lana, run," Chloe demands, shoving Lana behind them all. 

Lana does no such thing. "I'm the whore. He'll just keep coming for me. I have to be the first to die."

"Which is why you need to get out of here," Chloe shouts as the villain stalks forward slowly. "We'll keep him distracted."

"He'll just find her, and she'll be alone," Lex says grimly. "We need to deflect him to someone else somehow."

"How?" Clark asks, even as Lex ducks under the trunk like arm that tries to swat him to the side. They back up towards the door as a group, Lana in the middle, Pete and Chloe to the rear.

"If one of us has to die to get the others out-"

"It can't be you, Lana," Lex argues. "If you're the whore, then as soon as you're dead the rest of us are fair game in no particular order. So long as you're alive, we can strategise. We can keep all of us safe by keeping you safe."

"Should we really be discussing this in front of the big guy?" Clark asks as Pete reaches the door and holds it open.

They all slip through, already having decided to avoid running where possible under Pete and Lex's confidence that the villain would keep pace with them whatever speed they went at. Clark slams the door shut and the others immediately look for items for a barricade. 

"The villain is most likely a projection," Lex huffs under the weight of a solid wood display cabinet. "It's a manifestation of fear and catharsis. It doesn't think except to react to us. You could instruct it on how to make a homemade bomb and it'd just keep coming at us with farming implements."

"So that's a 'sure' on discussing our plans in front of the guy that wants to kill us?" Clark says doubtfully.

Pete grunts as he pushes the last piece of the barricade into place, allowing Clark and Lana to let go of the door. "This won't hold for long," Pete says. "We should get moving."

"There's a display of longswords and axes in the east hall," Lex says. "We should try to get there and arm ourselves. Beheading is the only shot we might have of killing this thing within the narrative."

"And what if that doesn't work?" Clark asks.

Lex gets a slightly maniacal gleam in his eye at that. "Then we find a trope more pervasive than the whore."

A loud pounding on the door makes them all jump and they all follow Lex's lead as he walks briskly down the corridor.

 

It's Pete that lands the killing blow. The villain's head rolls across the floor and everyone breathes out in relief. Well, those who aren't too out of breath from screaming.

Clark's a little embarrassed to admit that he's the only one screaming in terror. Chloe screamed in rage and everyone else only made the normal human noises of exertion and pain. In his defence, Lana had been a hair's breadth from being the headless body on the floor and he's neither used to horror aesthetic or being unable to super speed to the rescue.

Their elation doesn't last long.

"Wait, so why are we still here?" Chloe asks.

Pete and Lex meet gazes, communicating silently in a way Clark never thought he'd see from them.

"Um," Pete starts ominously. "So, don't shoot the messenger..."

"What?" Chloe asks.

Pete glances nervously at the dead body. "So when they do sequels to these things-"

"Sequels?!" Clark squeaks. "Are you saying we have to do this all over again?"

Pete shrugs. "There's usually an accomplice or a vengeful relative or something. Any excuse to milk the franchise."

"How many times?" Clark asks.

"That depends on our host," Lex says. "Some horror movies don't get beyond the second sequel, others can keep going indefinitely. Think of SAW."

"This better not turn into SAW," Clark says. He's actually seen a little of one of those movies, and quite frankly he'd rather be hacked up by an enthusiastic farmer with a sickle that have to live through any of that.

"I don't think we'll switch subgenres like that," Chloe tries to reassure him. 

Lana, who is still delicately mopping blood spatter from her face, turns to Lex. "What did you mean earlier about tropes?"

Lex purses his lips ready for full on lecture mode, only for Pete to beat him to the punch.

"Tropes are like cliches," Pete explains. "The whole 'whore, final girl' thing is a trope."

"Exactly," Lex agrees, only a slight tenseness to his mouth letting on that Pete's interruption bothered him. "So if we wanted to avoid the carnage that would ensue if the whore dies, but still want to try letting one of us die to get the others out from the outside, then we would have to find a trope that exists so universally and so commonly that it trumps the whore as a target."

Pete pulls a face. "Like the fact that black guys always die in movies."

"Yes, but they often follow the whore in horror, they rarely die first," Lex says. "Besides, we have no reason to believe that you'd survive in reality."

Pete tries and fails not to look relieved.

"Look, I know you'd all be in danger, but if I have to die first then it'll happen eventually anyway-" 

"No." Clark and Lex chorus.

Lex takes in Lana's frustrated expression that even Clark can pick up on. "I'm aware of your aversion to being a damsel in distress, but firstly we have no more reason to think you'd survive than Pete, and secondly the longer we keep you alive, the longer we have to figure this out. The second you die-"

"The rest of you are fair game to the killer," Lana says. "I get it. But what if there's no way around this?"

Clark avoids answering the question by asking another one. "Okay, so what other tropes are there?"

Chloe eyes the corpse with gruesome fascination. "Do you think he's modelled on a real person?"

"I'm honestly struggling to think of any as universal as the whore," Lex lies. Clark can tell by the gleam in his eyes that he's planning something.

"Okay, so what if we changed the whore out for someone else?" Chloe suggests. "A little PG action and someone else-"

"I think we've already established the whore is gendered, the only person we could switch to would be you," Lex says. "And yet again, we have no reason to suppose that you'd survive."

Clark rolls his eyes. "We have no reason to suppose any of us would survive, it's a stupid plan anyway. We need to find a trope that'd keep us all alive and end this thing."

Lex sighs and pulls a monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket, handing it to Lana who  _still_ can't get the blood off her face. "I don't believe there is a trope powerful enough to negate an entire genre structure."

 

 

They hole up in the nearest bedroom suite, complete with bathroom. Pete and Lex stay with Lana while Clark and Chloe head off to scavenge more weapons and some food, having rock-paper-scissored it out on who would go and who would stay. 

"I'm no horror expert, but even I know splitting up is a bad idea," Clark mutters, having been wholeheartedly against this plan from the start.

Chloe shrugs. "Pretty much everything is a bad idea in slasher movies. Turn the light on, don't turn the light on, block the door, don't block the door, pick up the gun, don't pick up the gun, get in the car, don't get in the car..."

"We're not going to be here long enough to need supplies," Clark insists.

Chloe looks at him as she stops in front of the closed kitchen door. "Clark, I don't know how magically Adonis shaped farmboy biology works, but humans need regular hydration and food. If we don't then our reaction times slow, we become erratic, and we get lovely symptoms like headaches. We've been here four hours already, I can feel my blood sugar sinking into my shoes. I need food. Real or not."

They enter the kitchen in a poor imitation of the police procedural shows Chloe is mildly addicted to, in that the addiction isn't as strong as her addiction to coffee, adrenaline or gum. The room is empty, but like the rest of the castle the shiny new appliances are gone and replaced with a huge, old fashioned range. This also means there's no fridge.

Each cupboard door creaks as it's opened and each creak makes Chloe and Clark cringe and dart glances around the dark room. They load everything useful into Clark's school backpack and pick up some extra stuff that Lex specifically asked for.

"Chloe?" Clark asks when he's under the kitchen sink grabbing some of Lex's special items.

"Yeah?"

"You're kind of a nerd, right?" Clark asks, then backtracks at the expression he can just make out on Chloe's face. "I mean, you know about this movie stuff, right?"

"I guess so, yeah. Not as much as Lex and Pete seem to," Chloe says. "The suave, billionaire playboy is a huge geek. Who knew."

Clark did actually, but that's not the point. "I think he's planning something."

"Okay," Chloe drawls. 

"I think he's going to try to get himself killed first," Clark says.

"Yeah, well. It doesn't take a genius to work that one out. The guy's been pushing for it from the start." Chloe says.

Clark grimaces and closes the sink cupboard door. "Can you think of any trope or whatever that he might be planning on using? Is there anyone more likely to die than the whore?"

"Not really." Chloe stops and considers. "He could pull a few cliches, like going into a basement without the light on, or saying it can't get any worse than it is. Promiscuous and popular women are one of the most hated groups in media. The only groups that really get a harder time are Muslims and..."

"And what?" Clark asks, because Lex could try but there was no way he could believably pull off Muslim.

"Clark..." Chloe says, voice full of realisation. "Have you ever heard of the trope 'Bury Your Gays?"

"No," Clark says.

"I mean, Lex could pull it off. It's not exactly a secret that he had a somewhat experimental youth," Chloe says, seemingly not hearing Clark's reply. "Plus half of Smallville already thinks he's the stereotypical queer coded Hollywood villain. All he'd need to do is bring that subtext out to play and move it into text and he'd have a target on his back."

Clark sighs. "What are you talking about? There are lots of gay people in movies."

"Not really," Chloe argues. "And those there are, they're usually comic relief or tragic morality stories. Bury Your Gays is a trope where any time a queer character appears in a narrative they or their also gay romantic interest die tragically. Hell, it even happened in Buffy and that's show is all about rewriting the cliches. If Lex was the only gay in the village then as a universal cross genre trope, it might actually take precedent over the whore and final girl stuff."

 "You said 'or their romantic interest', doesn't he have to have a romantic interest?" Clark asks.

Chloe shrugs. "Not really. I mean, if he did the odds would be pretty much split between them, but-"

A shout echoes from elsewhere in the castle and Chloe stops talking, trading alarmed looks with Clark.

They take off back to the bedroom without a second thought. It's only when they come face to face with what seems to be the creepy homicidal farmer's wife trying to break through the solid wood door into the bedroom with a carving knife that Clark considers how dumb of a move it was. 

She's making impossibly good progress while Clark and Chloe communicate in elaborate gestures to try to work out their next move. Chloe is for trying to bait the farmer's wife off (at least that's what Clark thinks she's trying to say) while Clark wants to ambush the farmer's wife while Chloe gets to safety.

After a few moments more of increasingly frantic gesturing during which Chloe squeaks in exasperation and they both freeze, Clark rolls his eyes and strides forward. It's harder to brush off Chloe's surprisingly strong grip on his shoulder without his abilities, but Clark pushes through regardless, raising the ancient but somehow still sturdy battle axe he's kept on him since the fight with the farmer earlier.

The first blow lops off the villain's arm. The second misses entirely, and Clark is disarmed. Things that used to be easy are harder than they should be even for a human in this place. Or at least, that's Clark's excuse for his newfound clumsiness. 

He gains a slash across his shoulder for his troubles but the farmer's wife only pauses in her assault on the door long enough to fend him off. The cut doesn't hurt, even though it's oozing red at an alarming rate, and Clark picks himself back up faster than is probably advisable. 

Chloe pulls him out of the way, swinging the slim, rapier like sword Lex had recommended she use due to its light weight. It doesn't have the power to cut through limbs and other body parts the way Clark's axe did, but it does leave a deep score across the villain's neck, a gruesome gash that bleeds far too slowly and reveals some of the inner workings of her throat. She barely falters and pays no attention to either Chloe nor Clark now that they're out of immediate range.

The door surrenders before they can inflict anything more than superficial damage to the villain. The farmer's wife pushes through regardless of the sharp splinters of wood she spears herself with. 

"What is she, a zombie?" Clark asks, aghast.

Chloe shrugs, craning her neck to see into the room. "Who knows? Slasher villains are always inhumanly resilient even when they're supposed to be human. And then there are the non-human ones."

"I cut her arm off!" Clark says. Said limb is lying in a pool of sticky red barely two feet away and it's making Clark more than a little queasy. 

"Yeah, well." Chloe moves forward. "I think they've locked Lana in the bathroom, I can't see her." She reaches through the impossibly big hole the farmer's wife made in the door and unlocks it, swinging it open and leaping back into the fray, Clark hot on her heels with his reclaimed axe.

Lex strikes the killing blow this time. 

"Please say we're done now," Clark begs. He knows they're not real people, but this whole beheading people thing is really starting to mess with those pesky morals his parents raised him with. He's not sure what to think about how well Lex and Pete seem to be handling it. Maybe his mom has a point about violence on TV desensitising people.

"Somehow I doubt it," Lex says grimly. He raps at the bathroom door and Lana comes out, face full of tense displeasure. 

"We need to end this," Lana says, and it's disconcerting to see that her gaze over the dismembered corpse is if anything even more detached than Lex's. "There's only so much time I can spend locked in bathrooms." She glances over Clark's injured shoulder and emotion floods back into her eyes. "And you're starting to get hurt protecting me."

Clark's shoulder throbs intensely as he remembers the injury. He glances at it himself and feels dizzy. 

"Clark!" Lex catches him as he lists to the side a little, face all concern and hands strong with fear.

"I'm fine," Clark reassures them all. "Just not used to seeing headless bodies."

"You could be lightheaded from blood loss. We need to sit you down and try to stem the bleeding," Lex insists. 

"Not here though," Chloe says. "We don't even have a door anymore. Where should we go?"

Lex's lips thin as he thinks, unable to tear his eyes from Clark's shoulder. "Follow me."

 

 

Lex hesitates before he opens the locked door. "I wasn't sure this would still be here. No one knows about this room, not even my father."

They descend the stairs with extreme caution, well aware of the dangers of going into any room that could be considered a basement under the circumstances, but there's nothing there. The room is empty apart from some random soft furnishings.

Lex's exhalation of relief doesn't go unnoticed, and Clark finds himself eager to get back to the real world just to see what's really in this room. 

"Raises some pretty interesting questions about how much of this is from the meteor mutant and how much is from us," Chloe muses.

Lex glances at Chloe with surprised admiration, the same look he gets when Clark quotes Homer or Lana makes a particularly brilliant business decision. "Of course, the downside to this room is that though there's a reinforced door, there's no other way out."

"I guess we'd better come up with a way to win this thing soon, then," Pete says with a voice full of optimism his face doesn't show. He adjusts his grip on his axe and keeps his gaze on the door.

Lex nods and the secretive glimmer that sends dread shooting down Clark's spine makes a reappearance.

He's not the only one that sees it this time, Chloe meets Clark's eye with a worried furrow between her eyebrows. If he had any doubts before, Chloe's concern banishes them. Lex is definitely planning something.

"Lex, can I talk to you for a minute?" Clark asks.

"Of course," Lex says, gesturing Clark to follow him off to the side. The room is more than large enough that they can have a little privacy. Lex turns once they're far enough away that the others can't hear if they talk quietly, and can't see them through the shadows. "Clark?"

Clark doesn't know what to say. He knows he needs to get in front of Lex's plan, but it's difficult to figure out how to broach the subject.

"Is everything alright?" Lex asks.

Clark raises his eyebrows and Lex chuckles.

"That was rather a stupid question, wasn't it?" Lex says. "What is it you want to talk to me about?"

"I just... There has to be something we can do," Clark says. It's a weak response and he kind of wants to hit himself for it, already seeing the sceptical pale eyebrow crawling up Lex's forehead.

"We protect Lana as best we can, keep fending off attackers until either someone on the outside figures it out and helps us or the meteor mutant responsible exhausts their energies and imagination," Lex says. He places a hand on Clark's shoulder and it's more of a caress than the manly clap Lex usually gives him. "We'll make it through, so long as we're together."

And sure, Lex likes to wax poetic about destiny, but he's never this mushy. "Lex, whatever it is you're planning, please don't."

Lex's hand drops to his side. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Clark. I've already told you, there's not much we can do."

"But we'll make it through together, right?" Clark asks, and he can't help it if his tone is bratty. Lex is planning to flirt with him in order to get himself killed, Clark rather thinks he has a right to be annoyed and upset.

"Exactly," Lex agrees smoothly. "After all, it can't get any worse, right?"

Clark can't suppress his eye roll. Lex is really going for it with the life ending cliches. "I know what you're trying to do."

"Clark-"

"No," Clark says, and as Lex pouts just slightly at the interruption, inspiration strikes. "I won't let you die. I can't."

"We're not going to die," Lex reassures him.

"And I won't let you use my feelings for you to get yourself killed," Clark continues, leaning into Lex's space. "I couldn't handle it if I lost you."

Lex's eyes glimmer with understanding. "This won't work, Clark."

Clark shrugs. "What won't work? All we can do is wait to be rescued, right?"

Lex sighs and runs his hand over his head. "You heard what Chloe said. This place is partly made up of what's in our minds. You can't fake anything here."

"Then what were you planning to do?" Clark asks.

Lex's eyebrow creeps back up. "I think you miss the point."

"And what's that?" Clark asks. He's somehow closer to Lex now, close enough to see the way Lex's eyes flick down to his lips before he speaks.

"I don't need to fake anything," Lex says.

Clark doesn't get the chance to respond. The bang that echoes from the door is loud enough to make him jump, and any conversation or train of thought is lost. It's started again, their brief reprieve over. 

The others have migrated closer together, weapons raised at the ready and swaying from foot to foot with nervous energy.

"So, just how reinforced are we talking with this door?" Pete asks as said door visibly wobbles.

"In this universe? I'm guessing not very," Chloe mutters.

Lex tilts his head. "I guess we're about to find out."

It lasts longer than the bedroom door did. By about two minutes.

Seemingly realising it needs to up the anti, the slasher universe has decided to provide them with a whole group of evil hillbilly farm children wielding everything from a pair of dressmaker's scissors and a baseball bat to a hacksaw. 

It takes less than a minute before the villains wear them down enough that Lana gets stabbed in the stomach with the scissors. She's still standing, pained gasps and a grimace on her face, trying to back away and dodge attack after attack. Her hand is pressed firm around the protruding scissors and she's not yet bleeding out too heavily. But Lex has a broken arm, and Clark can't seem to keep his feet for more than a few seconds, Chloe is struggling to get any of the villains to engage her, and Pete is taking on two at once. 

They've not lost yet, but they're not far off. As good as they give, they can't do this forever. Even if they win this battle there'll only be more, and Clark doesn't know how much longer they can hold out. Especially when he sees a scythe skim Pete's leg leaving Chloe the only one not bleeding as the floor gets redder and redder from their injuries and the villains they manage to behead...

And then they're in the bedroom of an extremely frustrated teen who's glaring at Jonathan Kent. 

"Dad!" Clark gasps in relief. 

Lana is fine, inspecting the now uninjured site of her stabbing. Lex's arm also seems fine, and Clark notes distantly that his own chest has stopped hurting.

The teen curses and attempts to make a break for it, only to come up short with Jonathan's hand wrapped firm around his arm. "I think there's some people down at the Sheriff's station who would like to have a talk with you, young man," he says in his sternest 'dad' voice. To Clark and the others he says, "It's alright now. It's over."

The moment the kid is turned over to the Sheriff, who promises she'll get the location of the previous victims out of him, Clark flings himself at his dad for a hug. Of all the weirdness of Smallville, this has to be Clark's least favourite incident.

They all drift back to the Kent farm, a universal feeling of comfort and safety at the presence of both Kents and the smell of fresh baked bread as they gather around the kitchen table, pressed close to reassure each other they all made it. Apart from Lex, who hangs back, pretending to stare out of the window and shooting the occasional glance at the rest of the group.

Clark looks around at the others one last time, taking in their exhausted but relaxed and healthy faces, and stands up. "Lex?"

Lex looks up with a small smile that doesn't reach his eyes.

"Come out to the barn with me?" Clark asks.

He doesn't quite know how to interpret the shiver that goes through Lex at those words, but when he leaves the house Lex follows.

"What did you mean about not having to fake anything?" Clark asks once they’re stood by the telescope. He could leave it, pretend it was just a line Lex used to paint the target on his back. He doesn't want to.

Lex's smile is real this time but it's tinged with such an abundance of regret that it makes Clark want to wrap him up in a blanket and feed him cookies and hot cocoa until he looks happy. "Clark, we both know what I meant."

Clark takes a breath. "That you- that you have feelings for me."

Lex doesn't respond. He doesn't need to. He just watches Clark as he works through the revelation. 

"You weren't just playing the trope. You like guys," Clark continues. "You like me." He knows his eyes must be wide, knows his tone is too high pitched to be reassuring. 

"It's alright," Lex soothes. "You don't have to say anything about it right now. We can move past it."

Clark laughs and it comes out hysterical. "You just tried to get yourself killed using the fact you... Lex, that's messed up."

"I used what I had," Lex admits. "I wasn't lying. I heal abnormally fast, I rarely if ever get sick. If I was the first to get killed I would stand the best chance."

"That's not..." Clark winces. He knows that if it came down to it he himself would have probably survived. Psychosomatic or not, it took a lot to injure him, let alone anything worse. Lex, on the other hand. It's true he heals fast, but a dead person can't heal. But Lex doesn't know all that. He only knows that of the lot of them he's the one most likely to have a meteor mutation. Has already got one in the form of his baldness and miraculous recovery from severe asthma if nothing else. 

"Clark?" Lex asks, and there's an edge to it that confuses Clark. He sounds urgent.

Clark forces his hysteria down and steps closer, reaching out to settle his hand on Lex's arm. 

"I'm so sorry," Lex says.

"What for? You can't help how you feel," Clark says. In all honesty Clark isn't sure he'd want Lex to feel any differently. He's still figuring it out, having only started to consider it mere hours ago, but he's slowly wondering if maybe Lex having feelings for him like that isn't actually a pretty awesome thing.

Lex only smiles that sad smile again and raises a hand to Clark's face.

Clark's heart is pounding, his head swimming with the idea that Lex might be about to kiss him. And yes, that is definitely an awesome thing. A miraculous thing. How could Clark have ever not known he wanted this? He leans forward ever so slightly in encouragement and Lex steps in even closer and-

"Clark!" Pete yells urgently, his feet thudding as he races into the barn. 

Clark jerks back, confused and more than a little annoyed. "Pete-"

"It's not over!" Pete shouts back, on the stairs now.

"What?" Clark turns back to Lex to ask if he knows what Pete means.

Behind Lex is yet another psycho killer with shadowed features and an upraised weapon. And Lex is still smiling that smile full of regret and apology and he isn't moving or turning to see the killer.

"Lex!" Clark tries to superspeed around him but his powers aren't working, and Clark now realises he never thought to test them after Jonathan rescued them.

"I'm sorry," Lex repeats.

"No!" Clark lunges forward, confused as the world slows down in a way completely foreign from the way it does when he's in superspeed. He watches Lex's face crease with matching confusion and then dawning horror in the time it takes for Clark's lunge to throw him out of the way.

He feels the axe bite into his stomach, sees Lex scream in a way he didn't think Lex was capable of. Sees Pete gain the upper floor at last and dispatch the latest killer incarnation. He doesn't hear any of it.

Sound comes rushing back. Lex drops down alongside him as Clark's legs give way.

"I don't understand," Lex babbles. "It's supposed to be me. I'm the one who..." He breaks off, hands fluttering over Clark's wound without touching, finally wrapping around his shoulders and pulling him close.

"You forgot a trope," Clark points out around the blood that's filling his mouth. He's no biology whiz, but he knows the wound is too far down to cause any injury to his lungs or throat. But this is movie universe, and in movie universe this is how it happens. 

"Bury your gays is universal," Lex says vehemently. "It should have worked."

"This one's more universal," Clark shrugs, then regrets it. When he's recovered his breath he meets Lex's questioning gaze. "I don't know what it's called. Not nerdy enough..." It's getting harder to talk, but he pushes on. "But you forgot about the one where the guy sacrifices himself... Bleeds out in the arms of the person he loves... And has the dramatic love declaration." He can't suppress the coughs that start to go through him, and it'd be kinda funny how overly dramatic it all is if it didn't hurt so damn much.

"No," Lex shakes his head. "No, you don't get to do this."

"...Be fine," Clark says and forces a smile. "Survived worse.... Survived your Porsche..."

Lex's startled face is the last thing Clark sees before the world fades to black.

 

 

Clark's first breath back in the real world is dusty.  He coughs, but it doesn't hurt the way it did in the movie universe. 

The space around him is dark but for the projected image playing on the wall in front of him. Soundless, Lana screams as Jonathan collapses to the floor in front of her. A killer advances on her and she gives it a roundhouse kick to the face that has Clark stopping a moment to watch. He shakes his head looks around.

There are the outlines of makeshift seats around him. Some are occupied by motionless figures. One nearer the front is occupied by a silhouette that appears to be stuffing popcorn in its mouth.

While on the screen Chloe sprays his mom's cleaning bleach into the eyes of the killer still gunning for Lana, Clark walks towards the only other conscious audience member.

Lana takes a backhand to the face that sends her stumbling and the figure in front of Clark laughs around his popcorn.

"Why are you doing this?" Clark asks, when he's close enough that the man can't possibly get away. Clark surreptitiously uses his X-Ray vision just to make sure he has it again. All is in working order.

The figure freezes and then turns. "How did you...?"

"I could ask the same," Clark says. "Tell me how to get them out of there."

Still in silhouette, Clark can't tell who the figure is, if he knows them at all. "You can't."

"But I'm betting you can," Clark replies as evenly as he can when he can see Lana grappling for her life in his periphery vision.

"I won't," The figure says. "They have it coming."

Clark makes a conscious effort not to slam the guy's head into the wall. He has no idea how that would affect the movie universe. "Why? What did they ever do to you?"

"Youth," The guy spits. "You think you have a right to change whatever you want, no matter how special it is. Was." He pauses and looks up at the projection then back to Clark. "I was the projectionist at the Talon. Before Luthor and Lana got ahold of it and turned it into a cutesy coffee shop."

Clark frowns. "It was shut down before Lex bought it."

"Yeah," The guy drawls. "And how do you think that happened? You think it's just a coincidence it suddenly developed money problems just before Luthor decided to buy it out from under us?"

"It didn't suddenly..." Clark gives up. He doesn't even know where to start with that mess of a theory. "So you're angry because there's no room for a projectionist at the Talon anymore?"

"Angry?" The guy scoffs. "That job was my life. The people on screen were my family. They took everything from me."

Clark supposes it would have been too much to ask for it to be a mutant with some amount of rationality left. "What about the others? The ones you did this to before us?"

"There were no others before you."

"There were-"

"It was part of the plot," the guy says, his tone indicating Clark should have figured that out by himself. "I can use things from your head, why wouldn't I be able to put things in there too?"

Of course. As always, the two double Ls drew Smallville's most psychopathic meteor mutants like moths to flame. 

Clark sighs wearily and picks the guy up by the neck. "You're a real piece of shit, you know that?" It's not the kind of language he would usually use, and even now his mother's disapproving frown makes an appearance in his thoughts, but it's hard to be civil after what this guy put them through. "Let them go, or I show you a whole new genre of horror."

"I won't," The guy says feverishly, eyes going back to the projection as the villain on screen raises its weapon to strike the killing blow.

He's out of time. 

Clark runs over to the projector in the blink of an eye and brings his fist down on it. "You can't watch it now. You may as well end this."

"No!"

Another blink and he has the guy by the throat again. "Let. Them. Go."

"W-what are you?"

Clark smiles, letting his face settle into the expression it always formed on Red K. "Do you wanna find out?"

 

The first thing Lex says after he opens his eyes is, "I hit you with my car."

Clark would roll his eyes, but he's a little busy squeezing the living daylights out of his friend. 

"Clark," Lex says after a moment, and Clark pulls back a little to look him in the eye. "You couldn't fake anything in there"

"So I've been told," Clark agrees.

"Dramatic love declaration," Lex says.

"It was kind of a surprise to me too," Clark admits. It wasn't the most ideal situation to figure out you're in love with your best friend, but Clark can't say he's that shocked that it took a life or death situation. 

Lex struggles for words for a moment, then, "never do that again."

"What? Declare love to you or die?" Clark teases. He sobers up at the look on Lex's face. "You tried to do it twice." 

"That's different."

"No it isn't." He thinks about the second time around. "How did you know it wasn't over?"

Lex chuckles humourlessly. "Because that's how it always happens. The plucky survivor or, more rarely, survivors get to what they think is safety. At some point someone says 'it's over', and then someone dies bloody."

"And now? How do we know we're really out?" Clark asks.

Lex considers for a moment. "I don't know."

"Well I've been thinking about it," Clark says, shuffling even closer to where Lex is still slumped in the chair. "And I can't think of many movies where two guys get to make out. Like, really make out."

A slow grin creeps over Lex's face. "It's not unheard of, but it is rare," he allows.

"So if we just keep doing stuff that doesn't happen in movies..." Clark suggests, leaning down.

"That might take some time," Lex points out, but he's already sitting up to meet Clark halfway.

Clark shrugs. "Then we better get started."

The kiss that follows is the most real thing Clark's ever felt. 


End file.
